Recycled Pencil Tray

Make a recycled pencil tray out of recycled plastic, paper maché and a few odds and ends!

We made a monster creature, as my youngest is still quite obsessed with the Spore game. You can adapt the basic idea to make almost any animal or creature.

You will need:

• A plastic bottle
• Two plastic trays (we used the small veggie trays)
• A plastic lid
• Newspaper
• Masking tape
• Modge Podge or wood glue
• Craft paint
• Googly eyes, chenille stems, pom pom, false nails, sisal

What to do:

Cut the top of the plastic bottle off and cut the bottle again about 1/4 way down but leave an overlap. The overlap will form the creature’s neck. Cut a groove in the plastic tray, the same length as the overlap on the bottle. Draw two hands on the extra plastic tray and cut out.

Secure the headpiece and the hands to the tray, using masking tape. Cover the hole on top of the head with a plastic lid.

Tear small squares out of the newspaper. (An old telephone directory will also work well and will not stain your fingers as newspaper does.) Start with the head, paint a generous layer of podge and stick the paper squares, making sure the squares do not overlap.

If you do not have podge, you can use wood glue. Dilute with water at a 1:3 ratio and mix well. Paper Maché can get a bit messy so keep a bowl of water on your worktable to wash little hands.

Once you have covered all the plastic, leave your project to dry and add another layer of podge and paper. The more layers you paint, the stronger your project will become.

Paint a base coat in your preferred colour. If you are going to use light colours, paint a white coat first. This will save a lot of time to get even coverage when working with colours like red and yellow.

Once your base coat is dry. paint patterns or spots in other colours.

Finish off the project by creating the face. You can simply paint a face or give the face a bit more depth by using googly eyes, chenille stems, false nails, a pom pom and sisal or string for hair.

A cute- and usable, pencil tray to make with the kids, costing next to nothing!